Season of Second Chances: an uplifting novel of moving away and starting over Read online

  Season of Second Chances

  Aimee Alexander

  SEASON OF SECOND CHANCES

  First Kindle Edition

  Aimee Alexander © 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it is published and without the written permission of the author. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Aimee Alexander is the pen name of bestselling Irish author Denise Deegan.

  Also by Aimee Alexander:

  All We Have Lost: mybook.to/AllWeHaveLost

  The Accidental Life of Greg Millar: viewbook.at/GregMillar

  Pause to Rewind: viewbook.at/Pause

  Writing as Denise Deegan:

  Through the Barricades: viewbook.at/Barricades

  And By The Way: getbook.at/ABTW

  And For Your Information: viewbook.at/AFYI

  And Actually: viewbook.at/AndActually

  Free short story: Checkout Girl: http://eepurl.com/-II1X

  To Jean Grainger, one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’m lucky enough to call a friend. This book would not exist without you.

  1

  Rain slams against the windshield. The wipers swipe full pelt. It’s dark and the road is narrow and winding. The silence in the car has lasted six hours, all the way from Dublin. Grace Sullivan glances at her daughter Holly, asleep beside her. Mouth open, she looks younger and more vulnerable than her fifteen years. In the rear-view mirror, Grace’s dark and broody son, Jack, at sixteen, looks on the verge of manhood. Ear pods in, he glares out the window, angry at the world. Grace can’t remember him any other way. She wants to tell him she’s sorry. For snatching him from his friends, his school, his life. For the lies he had to tell. (Oaths, not lies. Worse.) Most of all, she’s sorry for not getting out sooner. But she says nothing. She knows how Jack feels about her sorries. To him, they’ve always made things worse.

  She raises her chin and reminds herself it’s over. They got away.

  Fresh start. Hope.

  The Jeep is packed with everything they own or, at least, everything they’ve taken. Possessions are not important when it comes to freedom.

  Grace tries to imagine the new life that lies ahead. And has to calm her breathing. Confidence is like a precious diamond that has been taken from her. Not just once but over and over. And, though she has left Simon behind, he keeps on taking.

  But here they are. Miles away. Free. That didn’t happen by chance. It took guts and planning, patience and ruthlessness. She was careful. She did her how-to-leave-an-abusive-man research in the library where he couldn’t track her browsing history. With money she squirrelled away (and more borrowed from her unsuspecting father) she bought a second phone and hired a lawyer, Freda Patterson, a Rottweiler of a woman. One thing her husband taught her: to fight a bully you need a bully. While Freda took care of the legals, Grace worked out where to go, how to earn a living free from him, and most importantly, how to get as far away as possible. He knew that there was something different about her, a focus, a determination she tried to hide. He got rougher, crueller, to get her back in line. But she was determined. Determined.

  They received the court judgement today. And here they are, already miles away. The law is on their side. They did everything by the book. Apart from the lies. But there are bigger crimes than lying.

  The headlights of the Jeep fall on the ruins of the old church, then on the moonlit sea as Grace takes the last turn into the village where she grew up. There it is, Killrowan, standing still and colourful with its dainty street lights, like a postcard image. Memories flood her mind. Carefree memories. Of ice cream and sailing boats, of laughter and innocence, of fancying boys who didn’t fancy her back. Of life before Simon.

  The main street is deserted. But Grace crawls through anyway. So much has changed. (A new craft shop. A crêpe place. An art gallery. A florist.) And still so much has stayed the same. (Shopfronts painted in the vivid pinks and blues and yellows that have always spelled home; the same names claiming ownership above the newsagents, the butchers and post office.)

  Holly stirs, wiping her mouth. “Are we here?”

  “We are,” Grace says quietly.

  At the top of the street, the home where Grace grew up comes into view. Only in West Cork would white look imaginative. Despite the pretty climber trailing under the eaves, the house seems tired, old and somehow lonely. Returning home at the age of forty-seven, single again, children in tow, tastes like failure.

  “We’re not telling Grandad why we left, okay?” she confirms what they’ve already agreed. “He has enough on his mind. Plus, he’d probably want revenge,” she says fondly. Des has always been the problem-solving type of dad. Suddenly, she can’t wait to hug him.

  Holly nods. “It’s over.”

  Grace reaches across and squeezes her hand.

  As they pull up outside the house, the front door opens and Des appears as if he has been looking out for them. Grace’s heart pangs at the sight of him. He has aged so much. Fully grey, he seems to have shrunk. If Grace didn’t know already that he had Parkinson’s she would now from his slow, shuffling gait. He still looks dapper in his tweed jacket and corduroy trousers. That, at least, is encouraging.

  Grace and the children climb down from the Jeep.

  “Welcome to West Cork!” Des says with an official arm roll. “I have the fire lighting.” He gazes up at Jack. “’Tis bigger you’re getting. And you can’t deny the Sullivan genes,” he says proudly, referring to Jack’s heart-shaped face, green eyes, dark hair and slim build. “And look at you,” he says to Holly, “like a young Snow White.”

  “Hi Grandad.”

  “Come on in. I’ve made sandwiches.”

  “Wait. Don’t I get a hug?” Grace asks.

  Smiling, he opens his arms. She slips into them, closing her eyes. For the briefest moment, she pretends she’s a child again, carefree, optimistic, her future a blank and hopeful canvas.

  Until her mother died, Grace had always associated home with the smell of baking. Now, her nose is greeted by the smell of must and possibly damp. She takes comfort in the dark green carpet that she learned to crawl on, walk on, leave the house in teenage strops on. The orange and brown wallpaper makes her nostalgic for that life. She catches Jack frowning at a Sacred Heart of Jesus night light, glowing red on the wall. And takes a deep breath. Yes, there will be adjustments. Holly, rubbing her arms, darts Grace a look. The fire might, indeed, be lighting in the sitting room but the rest of the place is so cold their breaths are fogging up. Grace nods but says nothing to Des, for now, just follows him into the kitchen.

  The sight of the sink and her mother not at it sends an ache of loss through Grace. She is distracted by Holly mouthing, “It’s freezing!” Her daughter is new to heat rationing, having grown up in the kind of luxury one might expect from a plastic surgeon with a penchant for display. Everything was plush, perfect. Comfortable.

  “Mind if I turn on the heat, Dad?” Grace finally asks.

  “Sure I have the fire on,” he protests.

  She imagines the bedrooms upstairs, damp and unaired. “I’ll pay the bills while we’re here,” she says. Paying the bills with money she borrowed from him makes no actual sense. And the look he gives her says exactly that.

  “Turn it o
n, so,” he says picking up the tray of sandwiches, neatly cut into quarters and heading through to the sitting room with them.

  Jack and Holly look at Grace for direction. She nods at them to follow their grandfather.

  “I’ll make tea,” she calls, wishing she’d thought to buy hot water bottles.

  Carrying in a tray of teas, Grace spots Jack eyeing the old-fashioned TV that extends about a foot and a half at the back. She remembers that they are now in two-channel land. No Sky. No Netflix. The look he gives her says: my PlayStation will never work on that antique.

  Grace sets down the tray.

  Holly is peering at the sandwiches her grandad made. “Is there ham in all of them?” she asks, looking, indeed, like a young Snow White, with her dark hair, pale skin and the blue eyes she inherited from her father.

  “You don’t like ham?” Des asks incredulously.

  “I’m a vegan.”

  He waves a casual hand. “Yera, you’re in the country now.”

  “So?”

  “Well, it’s just natural to eat meat. Aren’t humans omnivores?”

  “What about the planet?” Holly sounds very South County Dublin. And equally miffed.

  “Ah, let the next generation worry about that,” he says, taking what looks like a huge protest bite out of his sandwich.

  Holly stares at Grace like she can’t believe where the conversation is going. “My kids will be the next generation!”

  Des squints at her. “You’re way too young to be worrying about the next generation, girly.”

  “My name is Holly.”

  Grace’s heart fills with hope at how her daughter is standing her ground. If only Grace had stood hers, all those years ago. Well, she did. In the beginning.

  Des glances at his daughter in surprise.

  Grace shrugs. “You don’t call people girly anymore, Dad.”

  Jack looks up from his phone. “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

  “The what?” Des asks.

  Jack stares at his mother in horror. “There’s no actual service here. We need Wi-Fi.”

  Grace is furious with herself for not thinking of it; Wi-Fi is their oxygen. But there was just so much else to organise. “I’ll get it set up first thing in the morning,” she promises.

  “On a Saturday?” Des looks doubtful.

  They carry their things in from the car in exhausted silence. No one complains. They know why they’re here.

  Upstairs is draughty, the windows single-glazed and in need of filling. The grouting between the bathroom tiles is black. The bedrooms are boxes with sixties décor, featuring pink bedspreads with ropey waves. Holly looks like she’s fighting tears.

  “It’s only temporary,” Grace whispers. With her first paycheque, she’ll find them a place of their own. Well, her second or third paycheque. She has to return the money she owes her father. And it’s not as if she can rely on the court ruling for maintenance. It would be just like Simon to simply not pay. Anything to wreck her head. The last thing she expects from him is fairness. He’ll want to punish her for this treachery.

  “Don’t apologise,” Jack snaps at her.

  He has earned his rage, Grace thinks, and lets it go. “Sleep with your clothes on tonight, till the place warms up.”

  She follows Holly into her room. “It’ll be okay, sweetie.”

  Holly collapses into her arms, letting loose a body-wracking bawl. “I hate him!”

  “Hey,” Grace says gently. “This is going to work out. I promise. It’s going to be good here, Hol. I can feel it.” She’ll make this up to them. A million times over.

  2

  Jack paces the tiny room, punching his fist into his palm, over and over. He shouldn’t be here. He should be out with his mates, right now, having a laugh. His automatic reaction is to blame his mother, to call her all the names his dad used to. That’s why he lied in court. He knew that if he stayed around his father any longer, he’d turn into him. So many times, he caught himself thinking like him. It was becoming harder and harder to keep those thoughts in. Sometimes they did escape as words and the hurt in his mum’s eyes, the pain, floored him. If he didn’t get away, if he didn’t lie, he might have killed his father or at least broken his perfect nose.

  He wonders what he’s doing now with no one to take his anger out on – and some anger it will be – outsmarted, outlawyered, outdone. Will he just take it lying down, this man so used to getting his own way? Or is he planning something?

  Jack drops to the ground and starts into a hundred vigorous press ups, counting them out to drown the thoughts in his head. He’d go for a run if the roads outside the village were lit and had paths – and he had a key to get back in.

  “Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…”

  Will his dad appeal? Can he? Or will he take the law into his own hands, like he has always done with his wife? Jack needs to know. He glances at his phone beside him on the threadbare carpet. Two bars of service upstairs in that exact spot. Jack gets up onto his knees. From his back pocket, he whips out his wallet. From it, he takes his old SIM card, rescued from the bin his mother flung it into. Best to cut all ties, she said. So did Jack. Still, he couldn’t just let that SIM go; he doesn’t know why. Now, he replaces the new one with it. Just for a minute. Just to see. He has to be ready. For anything.

  There are six missed calls from his father. And three voice messages. His stomach cramps. Is he strong enough for this?

  He has to be.

  He taps the screen, then closes his eyes.

  “Jack. It’s me. It’s your dad. Why did you lie? You know I never did any of those things. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I’d never hurt you, Jack. Call me. We need to talk.”

  Jack feels like some sort of Judas. It was his idea to lie. Otherwise, his father would have got access to them – and their heads. They’d never have escaped his control. Hearing him now, though, reminds Jack of all he’s going to miss: breakfasts out on Sunday mornings, just the two of them; the man-to-man talks; his actual wisdom on lots of issues. His humour. The monster could be funny. And loving. Kind, even. Just not to his wife.

  Jack could call back, explain that hurting her was hurting them in a million different ways. But that would be stabbing her in the back. And his father would twist everything anyway and then never stop calling. So, Jack doesn’t call back. Instead, he makes himself listen to the next message.

  “I love you, Jack. I love Holly. I even love your mum. She just drives me crazy sometimes.”

  Jack understands that. She drives him crazy too. The placating. The pleading. The sorries.

  “Come home. Back to your friends, your school, your hockey, your life.”

  Everything Jack aches for.

  “I forgive you, Jack. It’ll be different if you come home. I’ve changed. Why don’t you tell your mum you need to come home? Tell her it’ll be too hard there, miles from everything you know.”

  Jack kills the message.

  The great manipulator is at it again. He’ll never change.

  Jack scans the missed calls and messages from friends who don’t know his new number. Mostly girls. Right now, he is the mystery boy, the one who disappeared. Everyone wants to talk to him. Everyone wants to know why the hell he took off to West Cork. Well, he’s kept the family secret all his life. He’s not about to spill the beans now. He removes the SIM and slides back in the new one.

  He has missed a call from Ross, his best friend since the age of four, the one person he trusted with his new number. He longs to call him back, tell him everything, somehow make a joke of it all. But Ross will be out with everyone else. Probably getting hammered. And what’s the point anyway? Before they left Dublin, Jack fully thought that their friendship would survive, that he’d invite Ross down and they’d just carry on. Now he sees how dumb that was. Where would his (minted) friend stay? On the manky carpet in this tiny, back-in-time room? He knows that Ross wouldn’t mind. Jack would, though. Dragging his friend all the way down to this h
ellhole where there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, no way to use the PlayStation, not even a decent TV. And it’s not like you can keep a whole friendship going on phone calls. Jack doesn’t want to watch what they have peter out like air from a half-empty balloon. Better to let it go. Save Ross the guilt. He gets up from the floor and flops back onto the bed. This is the price for not becoming a monster.

  “Suck it up, Willoughby,” he tells himself, staring up at a stained and stippled ceiling.

  Grace lies in her narrow childhood bed, listening to the ticking of a small square alarm clock from the seventies and watching its luminous hands slowly advance time. It is incredible to her that her life has flipped on its head in just one day. She has finally done the one thing that terrified her most, the thing she never believed she would actually do. Until she did it.

  No arm will swing at her tonight. No whispered threats will invade her ear. She won’t wake with his hands on her neck because of something he imagined, something she said or didn’t say. She can breathe again. Nothing to harm her in this innocent bed. She should be celebrating. But this is no celebration for Jack and Holly. They have left their father, their home, their lives. They have sworn under oath that he beat them. They have lied for her. She begged them not to, reminding them that, despite everything, they love their father, he loves them and they should continue to see each other. With Jack’s first lie, there was no going back. Grace supported her children as they were supporting her. Simon was incredulous at the judgement. Livid. Puce. He could not believe that his children had accused him of doing to them what he had done to her. The hurt in his eyes.

  This is not over. Grace will be made to suffer somehow. That is how he rolls. Her body tenses, her muscles returning to their default position. Her head feels like it’s in the grip of some great force. She reminds herself of the barring order. Of the six hours between them. Of his obsession with his career. None of these will stop him, though, if he wants to hurt her, come for her, come for them. He has lost control. And that is what drives him.